Air Pico: A Micro Flight Simulator
- Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza
- Oct 8
- 4 min read
Aviation Jobs, 16km x 16km map
In 2023 I wrote about my first interactions with the PICO-8 and some of its flight focused games. I purchased the software back then and have gone back from time to time finding and playing games of all types. Once again, a flight game on this platform has caught my attention.
PICO-8 Fantasy Console
The PICO-8Â is one of the coolest retro game consoles to never exist. And like the early game consoles of the past, it too has passionate developers willing to do a lot with very little file size. Most games on the platform come in well beneath 1 megabyte.
What is a "fantasy console?" The FAQ page of the official website explains it as:
"A fantasy console is like a regular console, but without the inconvenience of actual hardware. PICO-8 has everything else that makes a console a console: machine specifications and display format, development tools, design culture, distribution platform, community and playership. It is similar to a retro game emulator, but for a machine that never existed. PICO-8's specifications and ecosystem are instead designed from scratch to produce something that has its own identity and feels real. Instead of physical cartridges, programs made for PICO-8 are distributed on .png images that look like cartridges, complete with labels and a fixed 32k data capacity."
Air Pico
Recently my go-to flight simulator on this platform has been Air Pico by Tom Mulgrew. Taking a look at their Bluesky timeline, in April 2025, Air Pico's conceptual stage started as an offshoot of a textured ground rendering experiment that started for development of a different game from the same developer, Combat Chopper.
On April 15th, 2025, the experiment resulted in the base map of the future game and spurred specific development of the expansive 16km x 16km map into a dedicated flight simulator. In terms of PICO-8 flight games, this is pretty massive. The next two embedded posts from the developer explain in more detail.
Tom Mulgrew mentions that the inconsistency caused by repetition and tile variety causes the tiles to not always connect seamlessly. For a land-based game like a driving game or an on-foot game, these errors would be forefront. His logic is that a faster moving game like a flight simulator while the errors are visible but less of a factor seems to have worked out fine in this application.
Air Pico would release for the PICO-8 on May 31st, 2025, with a few updates to follow shortly afterward.
Story Mode
The task driven Story Mode has players taking on different tasks and jobs that take them across all islands in the Pico Isles; the in-game world. Story Mode has 15 missions that will take players from simple tutorial missions for learning how to fly in Air Pico to performing specific jobs.
The actual missions ask players to do specific tasks like charter flights, sports game fly overs, delivering USB cables to stores on another islands, etc. These tasks are explained by an assistant at the start of each mission and who also provides mid-flight updates. Some of these missions have requirements that can be met for higher rewards in the form of gold stars.
Let us use crop dusting as an example. Players fly out to a designated area of farmland at altitude, then descend to a specific height (below 100 feet) and airspeed (below 70 knots) limitation above the fields. This challenges players to fly near stall speed at low altitude, mimicking agricultural operations. I say mimicking because there are no controls for dispersing any type of chemical or the need to load the chemical agents onto the aircraft.
Free Flight
Free Flight lets players wander around the map without any guidance. Players can select one of three aircraft to fly, though two of them do need to be unlocked through the reward system. In Story Mode each mission completed will give players Gold Stars as a reward. The more stars players get, the more aircraft are unlocked.
Free Flight begins by letting players start at any airport on the map to then take off and wander the skies. Not infinitely however, as the aircraft does have a fuel tank. Though fuel state is not represented in the game's UI, extended periods of flying will eventually run the tank dry causing a sudden crash.
Flight Model
Whether they are in cockpit view or one of the external views, players have UI for instruments that show speed in knots, height in feet, vertical air speed in feet per minute, flap position and throttle. Air Pico does not have complex systems more akin to a traditional flight simulator, but the Full Simulation flight model is not as unrestricted as the retro look of the game may portray.
Like in many GA aircraft, the airplanes do require stable turns, proper energy management and a light touch. Even in aerobatic aircraft like the Pitts Special, simply setting full throttle and throwing the flight stick around can lead to problems fast. Being more intentional with maneuvers is the key to success in Air Pico.
In both Story Mode and Free Flight, the flight model can be changed to Simple or Easy to negate the more restrictive parts if desired.
Air Pico is one of the latest flight games to appear on the game console and its developer, in true PICO community fashion, pushed the boundaries within the platform to provide yet another innovative PICO-8 game. Take a few minutes to try it yourself in any web browser or mobile device.
Connect with 'Air Pico'
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.
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